Bill de Blasio’s Full-Spectrum Victory

Bill de Blasio was riding to yet another appearance when he got a phone call telling him a new poll would show he had suddenly, for the first time, jumped into the lead in the Democratic primary. De Blasio’s reaction? To check that the call wasn’t aprank.

Exactly four weeks later, de Blasio is the party’s likely nominee and the favorite to succeed Michael Bloomberg as mayor. It’s been a dizzying month, and de Blasio capped it today with a remarkably thorough victory — regardless of whether the final Board of Elections tally, which looks like it won’t arrive until next week, shows him a tick above 40 percent or a tick below. What’s striking isn’t simply that he beat five opponents, most prominently Christine Quinn and Bill Thompson, but how de Blasio won, and where his votes camefrom.

His first job in City Hall was as a low-level aide to Mayor David Dinkins, who made the term “gorgeous mosaic” briefly fashionable. Now de Blasio is redefining what it means to assemble a diverse coalition. In a city where tribal politics have ruled for generations, de Blasio appears to have grabbed at least one-third of every major ethnic group’s votes; he may win more female votes than the female candidate and as many black votes as the black candidate. The transplant from Cambridge, Massachusetts appears to be winning more Brooklyn votes than a native son, Thompson — and Brooklyn, further cementing its stature as the city’s new center of gravity, could produce a greater turnout than Manhattan. It looks like he will beat Quinn in her own council district. The ad featuring his son scored because it was charming — but it was politically powerful because de Blasio didn’t target it at any particular audience, aiming in tone for it to be broadcast, in the literal sense. According to a top de Blasio aide, it was the biggest single ad buy of the primary — about thirty percent larger than the second-place spot, a Quinn commercial.

That the de Blasio family is a telegenically diverse coalition all by itself certainly helped. But the candidate was able to successfully appeal across traditional lines in large part because he developed a clear message based more in economic guilt and worry than in identity politics. When I talked with de Blasio about his campaign plans way back in October 2011, he hadn’t yet hit on his “tale of two cities” slogan — he was using the clumsier phrase “income disparity” — but he had already focused on what he believed would be the defining issues. “There’s a tremendous sense of economic insecurity,” he told me. “You feel it particularly intensely in the outer boroughs, you feel it in families that consider themselves solidly middle class but are worried —they’re worried about the consistency or the durability of their job, they’re worried about whether they can pay for their kids’ educations. And then I think of course every election is to some extent a referendum on the previous officeholder. [By 2013] there will be incredible Bloomberg fatigue.”

De Blasio analyzed this as a “change” election; Quinn, the frontrunner most of the way, saw an electorate basically happy with the city’s direction. Thompson was somewhere in the middle, which is where he seems to be finishing, overtaking Quinn for second place and hoping for a chance at a runoff. Tonight, de Blasio’s reading of the city’s mood was proven decisively correct — well, at least his reading of the mood of the 300,000 or so voters who pulled his lever. They’ve made de Blasio the first non-Jewish white candidate to win the Democratic primary in 44 years — since Mario Procaccino, in 1969, for you political trivia buffs. Procaccino went on to lose the general election to the incumbent, John Lindsay, a former Republican. Whether he wins the primary outright or enters a runoff against Thompson as the heavy favorite, De Blasio seems headed for a general election matchup with Joe Lhota, an actual Republican, in what should be an intriguing contrast of ideologies. Ever the tactician, de Blasio has already started talking up his practical governmental experience, to counter what will likely be a main Lhota attack. But while it’s true that New Yorkers want to be confident they’re electing someone competent, de Blasio’s big primary win shows that after twelve years of Bloomberg, a changing city seems to want something more than amanager.

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As we anticipate the end of Mueller, signs of a wind-down:-SCO prosecutors bringing family into the office for visits-Staff carrying out boxes-Manafort sentenced, top prosecutor leaving-office of 16 attys down to 10-DC US Atty stepping up in cases-grand jury not seen in 2mo

For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.

Sometimes these optional features involve aesthetics or comfort, like premium seating, fancy lighting or extra bathrooms. But other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the plane’s operations.

Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesia’s Lion Air, have opted not to buy them — and regulators don’t require them. Now, in the wake of the two deadly crashes involving the same jet model, Boeing will make one of those safety features standard as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again.

… Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another.

Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes, according to a person familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy.

Attorneys for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and more than a dozen other defendants charged in a Florida prostitution sting filed a motion to stop the public release of surveillance videos and other evidence taken by police.

Attorneys filed the motion Wednesday in Palm Beach County court. The State of Florida does not agree with the request, according to the filing.

In the motion, the attorneys asked the court to grant a protective order to safeguard the confidentiality of the materials seized from the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, and “in particular the videos, until further order of the court.”

Two years in, White House aides are dismayed to discover the president likes lobbing pointless, nasty attacks at people like George Conway and John McCain

But the saga has left even White House aides accustomed to a president who bucks convention feeling uncomfortable. While the controversies may have pushed aside some bad news, they also trampled on Trump’s Wednesday visit to an army tank manufacturing plant in swing state Ohio.

“For the most part, most people internally don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole,” said one former senior White House official. A current senior White House official said White House aides are making an effort “not to discuss it in polite company.” Another current White House official bemoaned the tawdry distraction. “It does not appear to be a great use of our time to talk about George Conway or dead John McCain. … Why are we doing this?

When Mr. Trump was running for president, he promised to personally stop American companies from shutting down factories and moving plants abroad, warning that he would punish them with public backlash and higher taxes. Many companies scrambled to respond to his Twitter attacks, announcing jobs and investments in the United States — several of which never materialized.

But despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to compel companies to build and hire, they appear to be increasingly prioritizing their balance sheets over political backlash.

“I don’t think there’s as much fear,” said Gene Grabowski, who specializes in crisis communications for the public relations firm Kglobal. “At first it was a shock to the system, but now we’ve all adjusted. We take it in stride, and I think that’s what the business community is doing.”

There’s no specific stipulation that Milo must be heard, so it could be worse

President Trump is expected to issue an executive order Thursday directing federal agencies to tie research and education grants made to colleges and universities to more aggressive enforcement of the First Amendment, according to a draft of the order viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The order instructs agencies including the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Defense to ensure that public educational institutions comply with the First Amendment, and that private institutions live up to their own stated free-speech standards.

The order falls short of what some university officials feared would be more sweeping or specific measures; it doesn’t prescribe any specific penalty that would result in schools losing research or other education grants as a result of specific policies.

Tech companies say that it is easier to identify content related to known foreign terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda because of information-sharing with law enforcement and industry-wide efforts, such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group formed by YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter in 2017.

On Monday, for example, YouTube said on its Twitter account that it was harder for the company to stop the video of the shootings in Christchurch than to remove copyrighted content or ISIS-related content because YouTube’s tools for content moderation rely on “reference files to work effectively.” Movie studios and record labels provide reference files in advance and, “many violent extremist groups, like ISIS, use common footage and imagery,” YouTube wrote.

The cycle is self-reinforcing: The companies collect more data on what ISIS content looks like based on law enforcement’s myopic and under-inclusive views, and then this skewed data is fed to surveillance systems, Bloch-Wehba says. Meanwhile, consumers don’t have enough visibility in the process to know whether these tools are proportionate to the threat, whether they filter too much content, or whether they discriminate against certain groups, she says.

Two mystery litigants citing privacy concerns are making a last-ditch bid to keep secret some details in a lawsuit stemming from wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s history of paying underage girls for sex.

Just prior to a court-imposed deadline Tuesday, two anonymous individuals surfaced to object to the unsealing of a key lower-court ruling in the case, as well as various submissions by the parties.

Both people filed their complaints in the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which is overseeing the case. The two people said they could face unwarranted speculation and embarrassment if the court makes public records from the suit, in which Virginia Giuffre, an alleged Epstein victim, accused longtime Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell of engaging in sex trafficking by facilitating his sexual encounters with teenage girls. Maxwell has denied the charges.

Rescue teams in Mozambique are struggling to reach the thousands of people stranded on roofs and in trees and urgently need more helicopters and boats as post-cyclone flood waters continue to rise.

Rescue workers, military personnel and volunteers are rushing to save thousands of Mozambicans before flood levels rise further, but with four helicopters, a handful of boats and extremely difficult conditions, have only been able to save about 413 so far.

“I don’t even know if we’ve made a dent. There are just so many people. The scale is huge. We’re busy doing the best we can,” said Travis Trower from Rescue South Africa, adding that a lot of people had been washed away but those still alive, whom he had seen from helicopter flights, were in a very bad state.

More than 400 sq kilometres (150 sq miles) in the region are flooded, according to satellite images taken by the EU, and in some places the water is six metres (19ft) deep. At least 600,000 people are affected, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), ranging from those whose lives are in immediate danger to those who need other kinds of aid.

About 40 percent of the District’s lower-income neighborhoods experienced gentrification between 2000 and 2013, giving the city the greatest “intensity of gentrification” of any in the country, according to a studyreleased Tuesday by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

The District also saw the most African American residents — more than 20,000 — displaced from their neighborhoods during that time, mostly by affluent, white newcomers, researchers said. The District and Philadelphia were most “notable” for displacements of black residents, while Denver and Austin had the most Hispanic residents move. Nationwide, nearly 111,000 African Americans and more than 24,000 Hispanics moved out of gentrifying neighborhoods, the study found.

In an essay accompanying the study, Sabiyha Prince of Empower DC said the city “rolled out the proverbial red carpet” for tens of thousands of new residents in the past five years. But the new dog parks, bike lanes, condominiums and pricey restaurants that followed, she said, are not viewed as improvements by long-term residents, who can feel isolated because of losing neighbors, social networks and local businesses. Prince, an anthropologist, said longtime Washingtonians tell stories of “alienation and vulnerability in the nation’s capital.”